In God We Trust?

I watched this documentary yesterday and I thought it would make for a great discussion. Since we have both Christians (and I’m sure some theists who are not Christian) and atheists following this blog, I thought it might be worthwhile to see what you lot have to say about this documentary.

If you have the time, please watch the documentary and tell us your thoughts on it in the comment section.

6 responses to “In God We Trust?”

I watched as much of the docu. as I needed to get the gist. This “eternal” argument gets old if you live most of your life in one sort of “Bible belt” or another. Christians are no better, no worse, than anyone else, just as people who vote Rep. versus Dem. are really no different. They are arguing colours, not values. Just like the flag video here, which said a whole lot more than the two hour video featured. People are brainwashed from day one, and this has been going on since they were “invented” – I don’t believe “in” evolution (natural selection, sure) or creation but in something much simpler: invention for a specific purpose. Man was made to slave for a master race which he is now hesitantly beginning to suspect may have been the case. The “one and only God” of recent invention is a man-made concept by the elites of religion (and others) as a convenient weapon to set the fools to attack one another over words when such display of mob-emotionalism suits the rulers. This “God” is anthropomorphic, hence man-invented, and hence why no one can agree on what that is – everyone sees the same thing with different eyes and interpret that vision differently. There are as many “One God” as there are believers. But much more important, and sadder, man cannot live without some sort of faith in something greater than himself. When he abandons the Sky Wizard faith, he throws himself into some other faith: money, race, nation, Nascar, FIFA, and most blatantly today: “science” so-called. Man is an insecure, incomplete, rather ignorant species that simply hasn’t had the “geologic” time to adapt to the reality of having to abandon himself naturally and freely to the vagaries of his natural environment. His mind cannot comprehend the concept of balance between nature and his abilities to control and despoil said nature. He was made to be a seeker and extractor of wealth and to control his environment as if it were on an alien planet (which it actually is for man). That’s the programming. His makers also programmed him to literally worship them since they had power of life and death over him, a power that was often demonstrated so man would never forget he was property, a slave, not an independent creature. In the programming, the default brain setting for man is “denial” and he’s become trapped by it. It is said that the best thing to do when you fall into a well is to stop digging. Religion (and all other faiths) is man trying to dig himself out of the well he is thrown into at birth. The hole only gets deeper until a point is reached when the air isn’t going to reach that far and then you’ll have what I call “the maggot mind” experience: billions of creates crawling over each other panicking to climb the sides of the well to reach the now unattainable surface. Food for thought.

I also generally agree with the tone of this video, which seems to support the idea that religious freedom is important and isn’t limited to freedom to practice Christianity. They even bring in the “maybe Jesus never existed” argument, which I find fairly convincing.

I wish Christians in this country would get over their persecution complex and focus on things that actually matter like fighting poverty, taking money out of politics, improving America’s infrastructure, and all that good stuff. They’re currently too busy freaking out whenever someone walks past them without a cross around their neck to care about anything important.

I’m not sure I know what to say. It speaks of a culture that is largely unfamiliar to me and which, if I am honest, makes me glad that I do not live in the US. There were aspects of the documentary that I found deeply disturbing. There were also aspects of it that i simply do not understand. The Christian flag, for example. What is that about? The first thing I think of when I think about flags is this:

Which probably says everything there is to say about the difference in attitude in the UK and the US towards flags.

In my case, that attitude goes deeper still. I’m inclined to think that the biggest mistake human beings ever made was land ownership. And if flags are about land ownership, then… well… I have little patience for them. For me, they represent the worst side of national pride: ‘This land is ours. If you don’t like the way we do things you can go somewhere else.’ Hence the concept of a Christian flag makes my blood run cold.

In a similar vein, I can remember once, coming away from a lecture in church history, feeling utterly ashamed to be a Christian. What the church has since done to the message that I believe Jesus came to bring fills me with absolute horror. Such atrocities are by no means limited to people of religion, but I can’t help feeling that Christians should have known better. Human beings really can be the most diabolical creatures sometimes. The word ‘sinners’ hardly does it justice.

But I digress. I wonder sometimes if American conservative evangelicals would be as sure in their faith if they had seen the amount of bloodshed that World Wars I and II gave Europe? Would they be so quick to believe that they are favoured by God if half their number had been wiped out by an opposing force… or if 6bn of them had been massacred by Nazi Germany… or if their nation had been held responsible for such crimes? What meaning does a flag have in such circumstances?

I don’t know. But I did find some of the attitudes displayed in that documentary deeply disturbing.

It did not seem to be an investigation into God, but rather a look at the people fighting for and against the expression of God. Rather a lot of them, from both sides, came across as wackos. It was almost painful to listen to.